Recollections of My Father, Niels Jorgensen
By His Son,
Fredrick Jorgensen at the age of 80 years old
About the first thing I can remember about my dad was about 1887 or 8 when he was building the barn, about that time we traded homes with Aunt Lena or Tandy we called her and we moved from the lower place to the upper one. At that time and later he done quiet a lot of logging for several different saw mills and when the rail road came to Manti he cut ties by hand for a number of years besides farming we boys helped him what we could. We had a piece of ground south west of Manti we called the salaratus bottoms we would go there and gather it up till we had a wagon load and then pa would take it to the Provo woolen mills and trade it for cloth from which ma would make clothes for us. About that time pa was baliff in the court house when Butch Casidy the noted outlaw and several of his gang escaped from jail. About the turn of the century pa served one or two terms on the city counsel in Manti after that he was appointed county road commissioner which job he held for a number of years about the turn of the century he and four other men bought a horse power threshing machine which they operated until about 1907 when they sold that outfit and pa and Charles Alder bought a steam threshing rig which they ran until pa lost his health I remember another incident in pa’s life, he worked one winter for the D&RG Railroad when it built south from Manti on what they called the cut about 4 miles south west of Manti The time was in the early 1890’s I remember people saying that that winter was one of the worst on record. And the men traveled back and fourth on either horse back or wagon